


i need you now (but i don't know you)

by Ambs_Writes



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe-No Ghosts, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Light Angst, No Lesbians Die, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, chapter 1 is dani-centric, chapter 2 will be jamie's pov, soulmates dani and jamie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28515333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambs_Writes/pseuds/Ambs_Writes
Summary: 5 times Dani knew her soulmate needed her and the one time she was finally there for her
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 4
Kudos: 80





	i need you now (but i don't know you)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for a good soulmate au and this wouldn't let me go. I hope you enjoy!

**5 times Dani knew her soulmate needed her and the one time she was finally there for her**

_1._

Dani doesn’t really know what a soulmate is when her mark starts to appear. She’s heard the word, of course, it would be impossible not too, but she doesn’t quite know what it means. She knows that her parents are soulmates and that means they have a matching image somewhere on their bodies and she knows that not everyone has a soulmate, or not everyone has the same kind of soulmate. She understands that it has something to do with love, but the complexities of soulmates are still a little too advanced for her 5 year old brain. 

She didn’t know that having a soulmate would burn. 

It happens in the early afternoon, while Dani is out playing with Eddie and a few other neighborhood kids. She feels it on her chest, like when she accidentally touched a hot pan when trying to get a cookie but a thousand times worse. She screams and cries until every nearby adult is rushing to where the children have gathered. They look for any kind of harm, anything to indicate that something is physically wrong with Dani, but find nothing. By the time any of them think to consider the possibilities of a soulmate, Dani’s sobs have turned to soft sniffles and she’s burrowed against her mother’s chest holding one hand over her own heart. 

“Did you check for a mark?” Eddie’s mom asks, sending a sympathetic smile towards Dani. 

“I didn’t consider it. She’s too young, isn’t she?” 

“I don’t think you’re ever too young to need someone.” 

“Best get her home then,” Dani’s mom stands up and eases Dani out of her arms until they’re standing side by side. Dani still has one hand over her heart and the other clutching onto her mother. “Thank you for watching her.” 

“Of course,” Eddie’s mom gives a gracious smile and directs her son to join the other kids who have restarted their playing. Eddie runs off, yelling a goodbye to Dani over his shoulder. 

Dani and her mother make the short walk back to their home in silence, Dani wondering what having a mark meant. Once they arrive back home, Dani is sent to her room and asked to change into clean clothes before she comes back to the living room. Dani does as she’s told and quickly moves to clean up. As she trades her dirty dress for a clean one, she notices the patch of discolored flesh on her chest in the full-length mirror she has hanging on the door. 

It’s a flower, or at least part of a flower. It doesn’t look like any flower that Dani has ever seen before and somehow that makes it even more beautiful to her, an irregular white shape outlined in black against her skin that she knew would one day be a beautiful image. 

“Dani!” Her mother calls, reminding Dani that she’s meant to be downstairs. Dressing as quick as she can manage, Dani makes her way back to the living room where her mothers is waiting. 

Her mother is sitting on the couch, hands clasped in her lap, and pats the cushion beside her for Dani to sit down. 

“Did you see anything on your chest?” She asks, but something about her smile makes Dani think she already knows the answer. 

“A flower, I think,” Dani pulls at the neckline of her dress but only manages to show a little bit of the black and white painted on her skin. Her mother chuckles and reaches to undo the buttons that hold Dani’s dress closed so she can see the mark. 

“Definitely a flower,” she muses. “I wonder what kind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that.” 

“It burned.” Dani looked up at her mother. “Does that mean that having a soulmate will hurt?” 

“It might,” she smoothed back Dani’s hair, looking into her daughter’s big, blue eyes. “The truth is having a soulmate is different for everyone. Your soulmate could be someone you admire, some you trust, someone you love, or all three rolled into one. Your soulmate is going to teach you about yourself, and sometimes that can hurt more than anything.” 

Dani was quiet, her little brow scrunched up in concentration as she tried to make sense of her mother’s words. The older woman chuckled. 

“Don’t worry, you’ll understand one day,” she sighed wistfully. “The important thing for now is to remember this: your mark will grow as you get older. Every time your soulmate needs you for something, anything, another petal will be added.” 

“And then I’ll meet them?” Dani asks with wide, excited eyes. 

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s not really a timeline for this kind of thing.” Her mother sighs with an odd expression that Dani can’t make sense of. “Just follow your heart and you’ll meet your soulmate when the time is right.” 

Dani, showing remarkable patience for a 5 year old, didn’t demand to see her soulmate right then and there. Instead she nodded and then a far-off look took over her face, like she was already imagining what that day might look like. 

“I hope the time is right soon,” Dani said later that night as her mother tucked her into bed. Her voice was sleepy, eyes dropping but still shining with excitement. “I want to meet my soulmate as soon as I can. I miss them.” 

“I’m sure they miss you too,” her mother kissed her on the forehead and fluffled the blankets around her. “Sweet dreams baby girl.” 

“Goodnight mommy,” Dani’s eyes were closed before she finished saying the words. 

Dani dreamed of a garden full of white flowers, a voice that was too far off to be properly heard but whatever was said never failed to make her laugh. 

_ 2\.  _

The first addition that comes to Dani’s mark is brought with a stinging pain that shocks eight year old Dani to her core. It’s harsh and biting and reminds Dani of the time Eddie had accidentally slapped her arm when they were playing outside once. The part of her arm that he had hit had been red and swollen for a little while after and Dani guessed she had expected to see that on her chest as well. Instead, all she found was another white petal that connected to the first. It was angled slightly so Dani could tell that the final product would eventually be circular in shape, but at the moment it looked rather like a lopsided rectangle. 

She wonders if getting a new piece of her mark will always hurt but she doesn’t want to ask. Her parents always seem sad when Dani mentioned her soulmate or soul mark and Dani doesn’t understand why that is. She doesn’t ask about that either but she thinks it’s because Dani is the only one of her friends to be developing a soul mark already. It’s not exactly polite to ask about it, but Dani has had many conversations with her neighborhood playmates about soulmates. They all know that Dani has a soul mark, the boys think it’s gross and the other girls can’t wait for the day that they start to get their mark. 

Whenever they ask about Dani’s mark, Dani hesitates before answering. It doesn’t feel right to give away the details of her mark to someone who isn’t her soulmate and so she has to think about her answer carefully. She doesn’t want to give anything important away. 

“It’s a flower,” she says every time the question comes up during recess. “A white one.” 

“You always say that,” Eddie complains loudly as if it’s the worst thing in the world that Dani won’t tell him exactly what her soulmate mark looks like. 

“Because that’s what it is,” Dani rolls her eyes, annoyance clear in her tone. Eddie rolls his eyes in return and stalks off across the playground to partake in the pickup game of kickball happening across the way. Dani’s glad that he leaves, it lets her wonder about her soulmate in peace. 

She wonders what her soulmate looks like, and what their laugh is like. Dani doesn’t understand much about love yet but she knows she could never love anyone who didn’t make her laugh. She thinks about what her soulmate is doing, what could have caused that stinging pain. Maybe they were playing a game, like Eddie and the others, and got hit the wrong way by accident. Maybe they were clumsy and hit themselves trying not to fall down. 

As the pain faded, Dani couldn’t help but wonder what had hurt her soulmate so bad that they needed her to be there and longs for the day that she’ll get to ask. 

_ 3\.  _

Nearly ten years passed before Dani felt the addition to her mark appear. It had happened slowly, like a rising tide. Dani had felt it coming in the buz of her skin and the whisper of some emotion that wasn’t hers humming in the back of her mind. She ignores the feeling as much as she can during the day, ignores the friends who ask her if she’s alright just as much and ignores Eddie’s attempts to ask her out even more. 

She doesn’t know why he’s asking her. He knows they aren’t soulmates. Eddie hasn’t seen her mark but she’s seen Eddie’s a few times. His wasn’t as easy to conceal, resting on his bicep instead of over his heart like Dani’s. His mark is still outlined in black, just like Dani’s, which means that neither of them have met their soulmate yet. That hasn’t stopped him from asking Dani out to dinner, a picnic, a movie, anything that would imply the two of them are going together. 

Turning him down has gotten a bit easier over the past year or so thanks in part to Dani’s musings about the possibility of her own soulmate. The more time that passes, the more time Dani spends alone, the more time she has to observe and think and eventually she comes to the conclusion that even if they didn’t have soulmates, she could never be with Eddie for one simple reason. 

Eddie isn’t a girl. 

Somehow, Dani thinks that the universe must take things like that into account when going about something like assigning soulmates. Dani knows that her soulmate mark is romantic and not platonic because of the black outline. If it was platonic, the outline would be blue. It’s comforting to her to think that somewhere out there in the world, there’s another girl with a white flower blossoming on her chest every time Dani needs her. 

The comfort is dampened a bit when Dani realizes the emotion that follows the new petal on her chest. It’s one that she is familiar with, one that she had known often since her father passed eight year ago. 

Loneliness. 

Whoever Dani’s soulmate is, she’s incredibly alone. And that hurts more than anything. 

Dani understands more about what a soulmate is now, knows what this other person will someday mean to her and she can’t stand the thought of her cosmic other half being in any kind of pain. Wherever she is, Dani’s soulmate feels like there is no one in the world who cares about her and Dani wants nothing more than to find her, hold her, promise that there is someone who cares. Someone who will love her just like she needs and who will only ever ask to be loved the same in return. 

Dani swears she’ll do her best to find her soulmate before the last petal of her mark appears so that she can finally be there when her soulmate needs her the most. 

_ 4\.  _

Two years later, Dani is twenty and a sophomore in college. Her mark is still outlined in black despite the many people that she’s met in college. She has friends, people who haven’t met their soulmate yet and people that have. They all say the same thing about it, that they will meet when they are meant too but not a moment sooner. 

It’s the way of the universe, a professor had told her once when the topic of soulmates had come up in class. It was surprising to talk about in a class about education but Dani supposes it makes sense. Teachers are always asked complicated questions that they don’t always have an answer too. It’s not a bad idea to start figuring what to say when the inevitable soulmate question will come up in her classroom. 

The universe had given them a great gift in the form of soulmates, her professor had said. But the trick was that even now, people weren’t really sure how they worked. How could you pick a handful of moments when you needed someone? What’s the criteria for those moments? Do soulmate marks form at the same time? Why are platonic soulmates blue and romantic soulmates outline black until they meet? These and so many more, are questions that they simply do not have an answer for. 

But, there were a few questions that they did have answers for. The most important one, to Dani at least, was the feeling that came every time a soulmate mark expanded. When the mark expands, soulmates are sharing the emotion in that moment. The emotion shared can be anything from happiness to anger to sorrow, perhaps even a mix of emotions. There was a theory that said soulmate marks were meant to be a release of that emotion. The first mark appeared one on half of the pair felt overwhelmed with one single emotion and would expand each time it happened again. Some people felt the same emotions every time, some people never felt the same emotion twice as their mark expanded. And some, like Dani, had a one repeat emotion and then the next time it switched to something else. 

The first two times Dani felt her soulmate’s emotions, it had been all about pain. Not just emotional pain but physical pain as well. Dani could still remember the way her skin ahd stung in the aftermath of whatever terrible thing had happened to her soulmate. The third had been an all consuming loneliness, which was one that spread to the fourth. 

It happened in the middle of the night, Dani sitting up in her tiny college dorm bed feeling like she could cry despite the pleasant dream she’d been having. There was an emptiness in her chest but Dani didn’t need to look to know that her mark had grown again. Her soulmate was alone again, and even worse was that her soulmate was longing for something. That was there too, buried deep beneath the loneliness but Dani could almost feel that even more. Her soulmate was looking for someone to share something with and Dani knew that if she did, that loneliness would be replaced by an incredible joy. 

She’d never felt more guilty in her life for not being there when her soulmate needed her. 

_5._

As the time passes, Dani can’t help but wonder when she’ll finally meet the woman she longs for. Her soulmate, whoever she is, has suffered through so much pain and loneliness, and it feels like every time her mark grows, another little piece of Dani’s heart crumbles. 

The fifth time it happens, Dani is in the middle of instructing a group of fourth graders how to string together complex sentences. She’s standing at the chalkboard, writing down the subjects that her students are shouting out to her, when her hand pauses and she suddenly feels like crying. The feeling doesn’t come from her, that much is obvious from the way it comes over her suddenly and the slight burn of her chest where she can feel the last petal of the flower over her heart forming. 

It’s the kind of sadness that comes for a sudden, unexpected loss. Dani is familiar with it, sadly, due to the death of her father many years ago. A car crash had taken his life and that was the one moment that Dani was positive her soulmate had felt her need. The need to be held and comforted and allowed to cry until it didn’t hurt so much anymore. The same need that her soulmate was currently experiencing and that Dani had no way to give to her. 

She’d made up her mind before she was done setting the chalk down. 

It was pretty obvious after all these years that Dani’s soulmate was going to show up in Dani’s small hometown and Dani was tired of waiting around. She’d been drifting through her life aimlessly for many years, hoping that by working with children she could make a small difference in the world. Maybe she’d finally paid her cosmic dues, maybe she didn’t have to feel guilty about leaving. 

Dani was on the first flight to London as soon as school let out for the summer, only taking the clothes she could fit in her two bags. 

It was time to go where she was needed. 

_ +1 _

Bly was such a small town along the English countryside, filled with people who had never considered leaving. It reminded Dani of Iowa in some ways, the way that everyone knew who everyone else was and the mentality of sticking together yet remaining apart. It felt like a small part of home. 

Of course, nothing could compare to the home she had found in Jamie. 

At first, Dani had thought the pull she felt towards the gardener had been nothing but simple attraction, a crush. It was impossible not to like Jamie, with her nonchalant attitude and smirks and the caring heart she tried so hard to hide behind the chip on her shoulder. Dani had been attracted to her when they first met, briefly, in the kitchen. By the time they had their first real conversation, Dani was falling hard and Jamie, despite the cold front she put on, was falling just the same. 

The topic of soulmates wasn’t brought up until after they’d already shared one kiss. Jamie had taken Dani out for a walk in the gardens, in the middle of the night. Dani had protested half-heartedly, wondering why they couldn’t take this walk in the morning when it wasn’t freezing and joking about Jamie taking her into the woods to take her out. Jamie had told her to shut up, not in so many words and not unkindly though the intent was there, and told her to wait. It would be worth it. 

Dani didn’t believe her until she saw the flower bloom. It was beautiful, all white petals and climbing vines. Jamie explained all of the work she had put in to making the moonflower thrive in this climate, how much effort was put in for what turned out to be a very small payoff in comparison. That’s what Jamie thought people were like, only worth the effort once in a blue goddamn moon. 

When they kissed that night, beneath the glow of the moon and the moonflower, Dani knew. She couldn’t explain exactly how but she knew. Jamie was her soulmate and Jamie needed her in that moment. Jamie needed her to be there, to put in the effort and reap the rewards, however small they may be. More than that, Jamie needed her. She needed Dani and Dani would be there. 

Hours later, when they were curled together under the duvet of Dani’s bed, Jamie was tracing her finger over the flower petals on Dani’s chest. There was a look of wonder in her eyes as she traced over the mark, the once-black outline now a shining gold. The same flower rested on Jamie’s left shoulder, opposite of the scar left from a burn on the right. 

“You know, I was beginning to think you’d never show up,” Jamie joked softly, her fingers keeping up their slow movements even as she moved her gaze up so she was looking into Dani’s eyes. 

“Sorry,” Dani grins impishly, soothing her thumb over Jamie’s hip. She leans in, kissing Jamie softly and reveling in the knowledge that she can just do that. She can lay there with Jamie in her arms, their bare bodies pressed together and legs intertwined. She can lay there with her soulmate, finally able to be there when Jamie needs her. “I’ll try not to keep you waiting again.” 

“You do that Poppins,” Jamie shifts so she can snuggle against Dani’s chest, pressing a kiss over her soulmate mark and enjoying the shiver that passes through Dani at the touch. They lay in silence for a moment and Dani slips her arm beneath Jamie’s shoulder, propping her head up a bit more and allowing herself access to the mark on Jamie’s shoulder. The silence stretches on, Dani beginning to drift to sleep until Jamie speaks again. “I should probably go, before the kids wake up.” 

“No,” Dani tightens her hold on Jamie, letting her voice take on a playful, childish tone as Jamie chuckles. 

“I’ll be back in the morning Poppins,” Jamie promises and presses another kiss to Dani’s chest before she begins to pull away. 

“Wait, stay, please,” Dani catches her hand as Jamie pulls away, rising to a sitting position next to her. “We’ll be up before the kids anyway and I need you tonight.” 

“No you don’t,” Jamie laughs softly at the pout that Dani sends her and she wonders if this is what it feels like to be falling in love. “I’d feel it if you did.” 

“Okay so maybe I don’t  _ need  _ you,” Dani admits and pulls Jamie closer to her by their still joined hands. “But I  _ want  _ you here, with me. That’s worth something, isn’t it?” 

“‘Course it is,” Jamie smiles and lets Dani pull her back against the pillows, turning their bodies so she ends up being Dani’s little spoon. The position lets their matching marks press together and Jamie swears that she’s never felt more wanted than she did in the circle of Dani’s arms. “I’ll stay.” 

And really, Dani thinks, after this it will be a rare occasion for Jamie to go. They’ve waited all these years to be together, suffered through all that heartache and longing alone. She won’t waste another second and she’s sure that Jamie won’t either. Maybe they can be like the flowers imprinted on their skin, bright and blossoming over and over again under the care of gentle hands and caring affection. Maybe they can be worth it, worth the extra effort of giving your heart to someone else. 

Dani’s pretty positive that they are. 


End file.
